Legion 5YL - what would you do?

[caj]

During the Legion of Super Heroes 5YL, Keith Giffen &company managed to update readers on most, if not all the former Legionnaires.

However, they chose to bring in about a dozen former members to join the new team.

So if you were to follow up Paul Levitz's incredible Legion run, which members would you have brought back? Note: let's throw out the 'no Superboy' rule.

[j9ac9k]

I definitely would have brought back Wildfire! Perhaps since the dissolution of the Legion, he'd been stuck with the one containment suit and has had to cobble up his own patchwork repairs on it so he'd look like a weird Frankenstein hobbling around, usually walking around in a big cloak to hide his appearance and anytime he uses his power, he'd be in danger of rupturing more of it. (he'd carry around a bunch of duct tape or Flex Seal equivalent, constantly patching himself up) Then of course he'd get a new suit by the time the team finally officially gets back together.

[Jim Kelly]

The problem with all these sorts of questions is that we know the reality of the times. And things happened the way they happened because of those realities.

While I wasn't all that happy with the set-up at the beginning of the run, I was willing to go along with it, because I liked the concept in basic terms. What derailed the series was the insistence from Superman editorial that they change the timeline and get rid of a bunch of characters, some issues into the run.

This meant it wasn't really the concept as advertised: a series five years after the end of the Levitz run. It was a reboot (too much continuity had been changed for it to still be the Levitz Legion). I did keep buying the comic but, I always felt I'd been cheated out of what the series was supposed to be.

I wish it had been otherwise, but for that to happen the edtiorial policy at the Superman desk would have to have been very different.

[SilverScarlet]

The problem with all these sorts of questions is that we know the reality of the times. And things happened the way they happened because of those realities.

While I wasn't all that happy with the set-up at the beginning of the run, I was willing to go along with it, because I liked the concept in basic terms. What derailed the series was the insistence from Superman editorial that they change the timeline and get rid of a bunch of characters, some issues into the run.

This meant it wasn't really the concept as advertised: a series five years after the end of the Levitz run. It was a reboot (too much continuity had been changed for it to still be the Levitz Legion). I did keep buying the comic but, I always felt I'd been cheated out of what the series was supposed to be.

I wish it had been otherwise, but for that to happen the edtiorial policy at the Superman desk would have to have been very different.

I agree....it just wasn’t the Legion! Much like the last two or three runs (including Levitz’s last two stabs), there was just too much reinvention...why improve on the wheel? After 55 years of reading EVERYTHING released in regard to the Legion, I can easily say 5YL was my absolute least favorite run.

THAT SAID....I think the concept of a time jump is the ONLY way the book can EVER be brought back successfully. HOWEVER:
1) It has to be the original (Adventure thru Levitz first run) team.
2) They’re in their mid-to-late 20’s now.
3) They’re a finely tuned machine after over a decade of working together.
4) Some may be suffering from burnout, but there’s major perks for a home planet to have a representative on the team...quitting can’t be easy.
5) Differing politics get harder to handle as you get older.
6) Settling down and starting a family has to be tough in this line of work. Also see #4.

The potential is still SO there for the Legion, but your core base for the team is those ‘60’s-‘80’s stories. Keep that fan base happy, and positive word of mouth will draw new fans in.

BUT....the Legion has to be recognizable as THE LEGION!

[kcekada]

I didn't have a problem with the characters he brought back, but I wish more were used as time went by. Actually, it's a damn shame Projectra wasn't used more after finally being elevated as a substantial member. A lot of characters made minor appearances and then disappeared. And I can't think of one new character who I preferred to any previous members. Kono was the worst!

[Sutekh]

I did not care for the storytelling or the art, both came across as too dark and depressing for a story set in the colorful hopeful Legion future. (And just like the Star Trek universe, it's entirely possible to set gripping tales of drama and adventure in a universe that *isn't* grim and bleak, where everyone, even the protagonists, aren't various degrees of crappy unpleasant people!)

I'd definitely prefer something set in the Levitz Legion's future. Legion stalwarts like Garth and Imra, Rokk, Brainy, Dreamy, etc. could have moved on to married-with-children/semi-retirement and only show up for guest appearances or big 'all hands on deck' events, but the core team should be younger blood like the new Levitz characters, like Glorith and Dragonwing, some totally new ones that have appeared since then 'off-panel,' and some of the old guard who haven't moved on quite yet (perhaps because they don't have places to land, and the Legion *is* their 'grown up life'), like Lightning Lass, Shrinking Violet, Timber Wolf, Tellus, Polar Boy, Chameleon Girl, etc. No need for misery porn. Those that 'moved on' needn't have all died or turned into villains or been crippled in action, most could just be like Matter-Eater Lad, working as Senator to Bismoll, or Nura becoming High Seer of Naltor, or Shady returning home to take up the full time role as Shadow Champion (perhaps with her cousin Grev taking a Legion slot in her place?). Just as not everyone who has ever been on the Justice League stays on the League forever, the team could have some new faces, and retire some familiar faces, without a massive un-Legion-like bodycount 'kill alla Titans' angstfest.

Threats can exist that challenge even such a large and powerful team without annual planets blowing up. They made it for decades without it, but these days, it seems to be that a planet has to blow up in the first five pages of any 'event' or 'launch' to establish the big bad cred of some chucklehead I've never heard of before, and will likely never hear of again when this event is done. So don't even bother. Blowing up worlds, killing swathes of c-list heroes, devastating cities, all cheap attempt at puffing up an irrelevant event-fodder 'multiversal threat' of the month, IMO.

Too many relaunches seem to want to put their own spin on classic tales past, to 'out do' The Eyes of Tara Markov or Trigon's ascendance or the Death of Superman or the Great Darkness Saga. Fie on that. Make a *new* classic. Don't try to recapture lightning. Bring your own. And avoid getting the 31st century setting too tied up in anything currently happening in the 21st century books. That way lies disaster, as we've seen before. If it happened 1000 years ago, *it doesn't matter* to the Legionnaires any more than the Holy Roman Empire making peace with the Duchy of Poland 1000 years ago matters to me today.

[j9ac9k]

Fwiw, I loved the 5yL era. Loved the art, loved the bleak setting, loved seeing the team broken up and the characters sad and disillusioned then having to fight to reform the team and reclaim the Legion spirit.

But, going back to the OP question, I think they should have given us a payoff to all that darkness by having the Legion bring back that light to the UP. Instead of trying to relaunch clones in a happier, brighter "Legionnaires" title after the Dominator War, just jump "One Year Later" where the Legion is back up and running at full force with superhero costumes, bring in a few new members (like Catspaw, Computo and Dragonmage) and go from there.

[Sutekh]

Fwiw, I loved the 5yL era. Loved the art, loved the bleak setting, loved seeing the team broken up and the characters sad and disillusioned then having to fight to reform the team and reclaim the Legion spirit.

And that's my number one pet peeve with deconstructive tales, which can be *amazing* when they break a character down, only to build them up again, is that they end up not being quite so awesome when the writer loses steam halfway through and just leaves the hero all broken down and defeated, and then walks away, never bothering to do the building-up, stronger-than-before, part that is supposed to come after. As you say, the 5YL misery fest *could* have gone that route, and left the team all stripped down to their basics and forced to find the hero within or whatever, and come back swinging, more resolved than ever. But I must have missed that part. It ended up feeling like, 'The Legion was losers. Everything they fought to protect, even their world, got destroyed anyway. They lost. And lost some more. And kept losing. And guess what makes you for being fans of these losers?' I was not a fan.

Although, to be totally contrary, in a 'Legion of One World' scenario, pulling single-Legion heroes from different iterations of the team (Tellus & Tyroc, Kid Quantum & Gates, Gazelle & Dream Boy, etc.), I'd totally nab Devlin O'Ryan / Reflex as the representative of the 5YL Legion, because he was apparently almost as unpopular as Lori Morning.

[j9ac9k]

Although, to be totally contrary, in a 'Legion of One World' scenario, pulling single-Legion heroes from different iterations of the team (Tellus & Tyroc, Kid Quantum & Gates, Gazelle & Dream Boy, etc.), I'd totally nab Devlin O'Ryan / Reflex as the representative of the 5YL Legion, because he was apparently almost as unpopular as Lori Morning.

I dunno -- I didn't think he was that bad. The only character even close to being as annoying as Lori for me as Koko the monkey.

[caj]

My choices:

1. Lightning Lad/Garth
2. Saturn Girl/Imra
3. Cosmic Boy/Rokk
4. Chameleon Boy/Chameleon
5. Colossal Boy/Gim
6. Supergirl/Laurel Gand
7. Brainiac 5
8. Ultra Boy/Jo
9. Lightning Lass/Ayla
10. Sensor Girl/Projectra
11. Timberwolf/Brin (no Furball)
12. Shadow Lass/Tasmia
13. Wildfire/Drake
14. Dawnstar/(No Bounty)

[Thor-Ul]

5YL was really a different direction for the Legion and even if it was really an interesting take on the characters, one than was very in the line of what had been the Dark Knight Returns, I think, like Jim Kelly suggest, the realities of the time affected what was supposed to be. I think than creatively it had it positive points, but has a whole, the final result wasn't something that beneficied the franchise.

I remember than for Giffen the advantage was to put the characters in that crappy situation and make it in official continuity. In that time it was done with several characters (Twilight of Chaykin, also went on that route), but most of the time in not official continuity. That was one of the selling points and also one of their weakness. These were the same heroes from the 60s but ruined. Not something everyone was to buy. You can see it in other characters too but always as probable dark futures or as imaginary stories (like DKR), but here it was the Legion readers always had read, but older and broken, in official continuity. When continuity still did mean something. The Superman office didn't help with the Superboy banning and the forced reboot, that is true. But still, showing those happy characters as burned out adults was a risky move than didn't rewarded the readers with a rebirth of the heroic spirit.

Also, should we count than the series compited inside the same editorial against the L.E.G.I.O.N. title?

IF it would had been an alternate world as DKR, still could had worked. COuld be even revisited now, but as an alternate universe. I think than a guy like Tom King would love and could make wonders with 5YL, but as others Black Label series, it will be better if is in its own pocket continuity.

[caj]

I really didn't get the new characters. Kono, Celeste, Devlin, Kent, Ivy - none of them were interesting or seemed necessary. Even Bounty and Furball, who were different variations of former members, were unnecessary in their new forms.

[Jim Kelly]

I think the names must have come first. Because many of them are cool sounding names. I mean, Kent Shakespeare--that just sounds like such a cool name. I can imagine all kinds of different scenarios with that name. Maybe the problem was that was as far as they got--thinking up names and then having to figure out what characters would have those names--that's where they fell short.

[Thor-Ul]

I mean, Kent Shakespeare--that just sounds like such a cool name. I can imagine all kinds of different scenarios with that name.

"To be or not to be a super-hero, that is the question".

[JThree]

And that's my number one pet peeve with deconstructive tales, which can be *amazing* when they break a character down, only to build them up again, is that they end up not being quite so awesome when the writer loses steam halfway through and just leaves the hero all broken down and defeated, and then walks away, never bothering to do the building-up, stronger-than-before, part that is supposed to come after. As you say, the 5YL misery fest *could* have gone that route, and left the team all stripped down to their basics and forced to find the hero within or whatever, and come back swinging, more resolved than ever. But I must have missed that part. It ended up feeling like, 'The Legion was losers. Everything they fought to protect, even their world, got destroyed anyway. They lost. And lost some more. And kept losing. And guess what makes you for being fans of these losers?' I was not a fan.

.

Well written sir. 5YL would have been a better series, if it had resolved the original storyline in a satisfactory way.
--jthree